Claire Krawsczyn – How to move from side gig to full-time business owner

While building a successful corporate PR career, Claire Krawsczyn also started building a side hustle writing blogs and content marketing. When her side hustle started generating as much revenue as her job, she had a decision to make. Claire and I talk about what it’s like for an anti-risk-taker to build a business, why women struggle to see their full potential, and the one piece of advice she carries with her years later.

Q&A

You left a successful PR career to start your own company. What was your motivation to pivot?

After earning my master’s degree in Communications, I took a great job doing public affairs. It was stable, well-paying, and supportive. When my husband took a new job in a different state, I negotiated working remotely. That was my first taste of being on my own. Even though I still had a traditional company and a boss, I had my first taste of freedom. I learned it’s like to work on my own and according to my own schedule. I really liked it.

With our move, I had left the hustle and bustle of Washington DC and was working remotely in a smaller town where I didn’t know anyone. I had a lot of extra time. So I started picking up writing gigs on the side. I had a background in journalism and started writing blogs for companies and small businesses. The blog writing started picking up by referral. Within a year, I was making as much money from my side writing as I was in my nine to five “real job.”

I was working all the time and decided I needed to drop one or the other. 

Was it an easy decision to leave your corporate career and scale your business?

I am not a risk taking person. So when I was debating which job to drop, I decided I was going to stop my freelance writing. It seemed like the responsible choice. Truthfully, it took my husband’s opinion to give me a perspective that I didn’t naturally have myself. He looked at the situation and encouraged me to consider dropping my nine to five and building the business. 

I looked at the opportunity more closely. I considered the loss of benefits—things like not having a company to contribute to my retirement funds or take out money for taxes. But I also saw the potential. I could work as much as I wanted. I could be in complete control. 

When I decided to go for it, it was a time when businesses were starting to leverage blogs and content marketing more. I kept building my network and the business grew to become a full-time, career-building business. I was able to be the primary breadwinner for our family and my husband was able to be a stay-at-home dad when we had our first daughter.

Today I love being a business owner. It’s the part of my identity I feel most strongly connected to. 

A lot of female entrepreneurs doubt their ability. Why didn’t you have the same confidence or certainty in yourself that your husband saw in you?

I think this is such an interesting point and a really good one to explore. The feminist in me cringes when I think about how my husband made that recommendation, and how I couldn’t see it in myself.

I think it’s because women are often caught in the habit of doing what we’re expected to do and not putting things at risk for our own benefit. As women our natural inclination, based on what we’ve been taught, is to not go against the grain. When you consider my decision—losing benefits like health insurance, a stable income and long-term savings to take a risk and step outside the box—as a woman it wasn’t my natural inclination.

Sometimes it takes another person to see the potential that we don’t always see in ourselves. That could be a spouse or a partner because they know you so well, or a boss, or anyone who sees what you’re capable of. The truth is, without my husband encouraging me, I probably wouldn't have taken the leap. I needed that extra vote of confidence. 

In addition to the encouragement from your husband, what helped you get more comfortable with the risk?

My biggest concern was the lack of stability that comes with growing your own business. I was on a really clear career path. I was worried about giving up an income that gets paid out consistently every other week.

But the fact that I could see my whole career future laid out clearly in front of me—it actually turned me off. I could see exactly where I would be in 25 years. I could see my whole career. I knew it was going to be comfortable, but I thought, do I really want to live a life where I know exactly how it’s going to unfold? 

The riskiest part was giving up the security that comes with a straightforward career path. But I also changed my relationship with that risk. I started to focus less on the risk and more on the potential. I reminded myself that I had already built a business through my side hustle—I had good clients, I was getting more and more referrals, the money was there. Just because it was a side gig didn’t mean it wasn’t a real business. 

I needed to give myself more time to grow the business to see what I could do with it. 

You describe the tendency for women to play by the rules. Other women describe a tendency to check all the boxes. How did you get comfortable building a career outside of the rules, outside of the boxes?

I think moving away from checking the boxes is a muscle you can flex and grow with time. You build up the muscle and the tolerance for being on a different path, away from the traditional path. It took some getting used to. 

I don’t think going against the grain is right for everybody. But when you do, you immediately find other people who have done the same. You build your own community and get back in a school of fish. That has been a huge aspect of the success of my business. I spent a lot of time getting to know other entrepreneurs and small business owners. And I think that was a critical difference in “making it” versus not making it as a business owner. 

The most successful business owners that I know are still checking boxes. They just redefined what those boxes look like. I started my business. I became a mom. I provided for my family. It just came at a time and in a way that looks different than friends who stayed on a traditional career path.  

What was the biggest “turning point” in building your business?

When I shifted from being super transactional—I’ll write you one blog and you pay me money for that one blog—to being more strategic. That was a hard leap to make because I wasn't sure if people would pay for it. But they did. Getting a contract for a six-figure deal for a year’s work was the biggest game changer for me in my business. I was able to move away from charging by the hour.

What was a low point in building your business? 

My loneliness and isolation were hardest in the early stages of my business. I was working very transactionally, which was tedious, and I didn’t have office space so I felt alone. I was feeling stuck.

At that point I started networking with people. I was intimidated by some of the women I started meeting. They were a few years ahead of me on their journey. Luckily they took me in and we formed a mastermind group. For the first time I was sharing the highs and lows of business building. And I realized that everyone else had the same challenges, it wasn’t just me. Networking, specifically with these women, was a way to get me out of that isolation. 

That networking also led me to my second business, which is an office space for events, co-working, and leases to independent business owners. From networking and building this space, I went from feeling completely alone to creating my own workplace and community

Any last piece of advice for women wanting to pivot into more fulfilling work?

There's a piece of advice that was given to me a few years ago:

Anytime you find yourself thinking, what if this fails? What if I mess up? What if it doesn't work? Ask it from a positive lens. What if this works? What if this blows up and changes everything?

That’s been really helpful for me because we have a lot of thoughts that we don't need to believe. And once we realize that a thought is just a thought, we can create a new one. 

Thank you, Claire, for sharing your story! You can learn more about Claire and her company, Verano Communications, here. 

Q&A edited for brevity and clarity.